What’s the go with Andrew Barr? The chief minister was an embarrassment to his position with a performance on radio that “Seven Days” columnist IAN MEIKLE – not a psychologist – says gave a startling insight into a man realising perhaps that the spin is coming unstuck. 

BOY, oh, boy, did the Chief Minister lose it on 2CC the other morning. Breakfast announcer Stephen Cenatiempo had to hang up to end the on-air haranguing.

Sandwiched between his underwhelming Budget announcement and the opposition’s feather-duster, no-confidence motion, a testy Andrew Barr turned into a petulant kettle accusing Cenatiempo of being the one spinning the truth, despite a preceding 12 minutes of extolling the virtues of his own performance as treasurer. 

The taunt of a record of 11 budgets and not one surplus brought out Barr’s belief he had delivered two surplus budgets and a balanced one. Well he did, but mostly, really, really he didn’t. 

While I could find no evidence of his ever delivering a balanced budget, his claim of posting surpluses was based on the ACT Treasury including the returns on public service superannuation funds. 

Under an agreement by all states, territories and the Commonwealth, budget statements are to be presented under a Uniform Presentation Framework (UPF). The UPF excludes these superannuation returns. 

No one else (state/territory) does that, except the ACT. On the basis of the nationally agreed framework, the territory has not been in surplus in all that time and there’s no prospect of one any time soon, whichever way you measure it.

In fact, in Barr’s self-styled surplus years, 2017-18 and 2018-19, where he purported to have a surplus of $31.9 million and $43.8 million respectively, the UPF measure shows forecasted deficits of $254.9 million and $146.9 million. 

And while we’re at it, the Budget he announced last week showed a deficit of $483 million, but when you take out the funny business with the public service super, the UPF number tumbles down to a gob-smacking $701.1 million shortfall.

The government is obliged to publish the UPF figures and you’ll find them tucked away this year on Page 295 of the Budget under the vague heading of “GFS/GAAP Financial Statements”.

But back to the argy bargy going on in the breakfast show. Barr took argumentative umbrage at being accused of practising “sophistry of the highest order”, and hissed at the announcer: “You’re the one spinning out of control; you’re crazier, mate.” Crazier? Than who?

Anyway, Barr was rewarded with the dial tone as Cenatiempo sensibly cut the call with the withering comment: “We have a bigger problem than we thought, haven’t we?” 

https://www.2cc.net.au/podcasts/andrew-barr-hands-down-his-11th-budget/

BUDGET responses flow thick and fast as every advocacy group huffs and puffs (“Underwhelming,” Canberra Business Chamber; “Band-Aid help”, Mental Health Community Coalition; “Treading water”, ACTCOSS). And then there’s the lower-octane Phillip Business Community.

President Tom Adam put out a long, homespun response to the Budget. 

Here’s a taste of his frustration: “The ACT Budget was definitely a mid-term Budget, nothing exciting. But the Phillip Business Community has been asking for nothing exciting for many years and, sadly, our concerns continue to fall on deaf ears.

“Things we would have loved to have seen: gutter repairs, there are so many broken gutters that are trip hazards; three-year-old pot-holes, Fix-my-Street requests since 2019/2020 sitting unfixed; footpaths that aren’t patchwork quilts of repairs, broken or flat-out dangerous”. 

UNDER the heading: “And you thought it couldn’t get any worse”, in the latest edition of the “Winnunga Newsletter” is one of two pieces lambasting the ACT government’s “heartlessness, if not brutality” over the forced Housing ACT evictions. 

The column references an ABC interview with blind, nonagenarian widow Jenny Field, who has lived in her house in O’Connor for more than 40 years. 

“Labor Housing Minister Yvette Berry and Greens Minister for Homelessness Rebecca Vassarotti not only expect Jenny to move into another property, almost certainly to a flat in an outer-suburb miles from her friends and support systems, they are prepared to forcibly evict her if she does not go willingly. 

“Just imagine what else they would be prepared to do if they were not part of the most progressive government in Australia and Canberra was not the most progressive city in the world. (Joke).”

Ian Meikle is the editor of “CityNews” and can be heard on the “CityNews Sunday Roast” news and interview program with Rod Henshaw, 2CC, 9am-noon. There are more of his columns on citynews.com.au